The MIT Icicle

Back in January 1960, the craze that swept college campuses was creating massive icicles. And students at MIT took top honors by creating a four-story icicle down the side of Baker House. In fact, they declared it to be the largest man-made icicle ever created.

As reported in an Associated Press story about it from Jan 1960:

"They tied an ice cube to a string and lowered it from their window. Then a trickle of water was siphoned from a barrel down the string. By using colored water at times, they got a red, white and blue icicle, which at one point is about 14 inches wide."

The icicle only existed for a few days before it was destroyed, for safety reasons, by the campus authorities.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any color photographs of it, but these are some news photos of it I found. There's a brief article about it at the MIT Museum.

     Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 02, 2014
     Category: Fads | 1960s | Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia





Comments
This doesn't look to be a free standing? icicle more like a flow clinging on the side of the building.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 08/02/14 at 09:53 AM
I would like to see it in color too! Bet it looked like a big rocket pop! :lol: :coolsmile:
Posted by Tyrusguy on 08/02/14 at 09:57 AM
At last! A reasonable excuse to buy one of those old missile silos! Imagine making an icicle two hundred feet tall! You'd be in the record books forever!
Posted by Phideaux on 08/02/14 at 04:11 PM
Puny!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/3-storey-icicle-worries-neighbours-in-saskatoon-1.1346356
Posted by BMN on 08/02/14 at 04:54 PM
These are not in the same class as real icicles or stalacites.
It should be "Ice-drool".
Posted by BMN on 08/02/14 at 07:57 PM
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